Green Zone: How Close is This Movie to Reality?

For all the fast-paced, thrilling action scenes in the new Green Zone movie, it hasn’t been spared from criticisms as well. With a sensitive political subplot, one that revolves around the involvement of the United States government in the Iraq War, critics are labeling the movie anti-American.

Green Zone

But what’s the real deal behind the Green Zone? Is this really based on reality?

In an interview with The Guardian, Director Peter Greengrass said he wanted to make a film about the realities of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, bringing in the Bourne audience. The very reason why Green Zone is aptly labeled as ‘Bourne goes to Iraq’.

While Matt Damon has always opposed the Iraq war, Greengrass was more open-minded about the idea, but this changed when he’d listened to Tony Blair talk about anti-war protests in February, 2003 in London, and made the realization that somehow, there are some things that he knows that people don’t.

This led Greengrass to go on a research, and out of the many reports, interviews, articles, and books he’s come across, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City caught his attention. Here, Chandrasekaran, a correspondent for Washington Post, painstakingly discussed detail by detail the incompetence and ignorance experienced inside the Green Zone.

The book from which Green Zone is based

This then began the story of the Green Zone movie, which was written by Brian Helgeland. Director Greengrass made it clear, that although the movie was closely similar to reality, it was not an adaptation of the book per se.

Even the movie’s characters are based on real people. Foremost is Damon’s character Roy Miller which was based on Richard Gonzales, a real-life weapons of mass destruction hunter. Then, there’s the informant ‘Magellan’, who was based on ‘Curveball’, and more similar characters in real life.

True enough, with the movie’s release, a good number of people criticized it as anti-American, a slander to the country, full of lies, etc.

But whether you’re for or against the war against Iraq, one thing holds true – this movie will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time!